Previously on Orphan Black, Rachel stabbed her mama, PT Westmoreland gave Cosima free run of his cult village’s lab, Rachel started studying Kira, Helena went into hiding with nuns, and Alison decided to take a damn break.
Susan Duncan wakes up on Revival, surprised to be alive, and surprised to see PT Westmoreland standing over her bed. She accuses him of being the reason Rachel turned against her to the point of trying to kill her. And asks why she IS alive, to which he says simply that he needs her.
Outside in Revival, Charlotte and Aisha are adapting to their new life and go visit the camp’s pigs. But they notice one is missing and the pen door is ajar, so they set out to find it. The girls find the piggy in the woods, injured, scraps of food and a human-looking tooth nearby.
They hear a rustling and consider inspecting it but Mud catches them before they can make a very bad horror movie mistake.
Mud rushes them back to safety, but Charlotte keeps the tooth.
Back at Mrs. S’s, Kira is getting ready and Sarah is trying to pry information out of her about what happens during her sessions, but she’s giving the bare minimum and almost making me feel guilty for all the times I did the same exact thing to my own mother. Things go from frustrating to scary for Sarah though when she discovers a huge cut on Kira’s arm. At first she starts shouting about Rachel but Kira soon jumps in to say she did it to herself. She wanted to know how fast she’d heal.
What Sarah doesn’t know but we do is that Kira might have made the cut but Rachel was still the puppetmaster here. Mrs. S has a plan and they have no more time to waste. Felix will pick Kira up from school and then wait for a visitor Mrs. S is sending his way. They have three days before Kira has to go back to Rachel’s and Mrs. S has an idea to get some leverage, and it involves a bit of a mother/daughter road trip with Sarah.
Their first stop is the Rabbit Hole, where Scott tells them what he knows about PT’s history and HellWizard (who I accidentally called Wizard Face in my notes, which might be my new name for him) decrypted an email for Mrs. S.
Mrs. S tells them all she wants a timeline for the evolution of Neolution by the time they get back and frankly Sarah probably loves not being in charge for once. Mrs. S takes Sarah to a fancy bar and Sarah can immediately tell what S is up to; she was a grifter and a con artist, too. Mrs. S’s mystery road trip is taking them somewhere where they’ll need an ID, and poor miss Susan Perkins is about to get hers stolen.
In an artistic performance, Sarah and Mrs. S use Perkins’ tumultuous relationship with her own daughter and stage a fight to distract her long enough for Sarah to swipe her ID, and Perkins ends up inviting Mrs. S to bond over having difficult children.
In Revival, Cosima and Charlotte are making headway in the race for my favorite clone duo. Charlotte saying she thinks the thing in the woods is an ogre, not a bear like Mud says; Cosima responding with the scientific classification for ogres. All while inspecting the tooth Charlotte found, which she believes to be human.
Cosima marches to the foot tent to confront Mud about this “bear” and finally makes the Island of Dr. Maureau reference out loud, saying that anything bonkers going on is coming from PT and Mud has to know what it is. Mud says, “It’s not his fault,” and something tells me she’s not talking about PT. Cosima offers to help her, but Mud loses her nerve and just doubles down on the bear story instead.
Sarah comes back into the bar to give Mrs. S an out, but before they leave Perkins drops a nugget of wisdom, telling Mrs. S to try to give Sarah a break. After all, she’s becoming just like her mother. And Mrs. S hesitates at that because even though this was a con, that observation is pretty spot-on.
At his loft, Felix is being a good uncle, sketching Kira and asking if her homeroom teacher is single, you know, the usual.
Kira looks at the sketch and says she looks like her mum, then goes off on a little rant about how Sarah is RUINING HER LIFE and she likes her Aunt Rachel because she shows her why she’s special. Finally someone explains to Kira why everyone is so fidgety about her hanging out at DYAD all the time: Felix says they don’t know what Rachel wants with that special part.
On their road trip, Mrs. S finally gives a little more information: they’re going to see someone who used to be Neolution. Sarah doesn’t understand how Hell Wizard figured all this out for her, but it wasn’t him. It was a mysterious puppy with angel hair. But Mrs. S can’t tell Sarah that, not yet.
Back in exposition land — er, I mean, Susan Duncan’s recovery room, she explains that she and PT worked together once, but eventually split off because she didn’t agree with his methods, even though she believes in the whole genetically perfecting the human race thing.
Sarah and Mrs. S take a quick detour on their road trip to a little convent, which reveals that Helena isn’t actually back in the Ukraine as I had thought. Instead she’s with one of the only nuns that was good to her, right here nearby. Helena is so happy to see her sestra; she can tell Sarah has a lot on her mind, so she asks Sarah to sit with her.
Back at the loft, Felix is tucking Kira in when he hears a knock at the door. He opens it to reveal Adele! His long lost sister. Mrs. S brought her into the fold because she’s good at following money, and following money is what Mrs. S needs her to do. In Switzerland. And she wants Felix to come, even though there are only six episodes of this show left FOREVER and we can’t really spare him, sorry.
Sarah tells Helena about Kira cutting herself, which Helena and her wings with scars for feathers can relate to. And speaking of relating, Sarah admits that she can finally feel the connection Helena was always going on about, because she could feel Kira pulling her back from the brink of death.
And this, this emotional connection, this is the thing Rachel can’t create in her lab, this is the thing she can’t steal from them. Helena is like, “Look I know I’m pregnant but I could still probably murder at least half of the people causing us problems,” but Sarah would rather her save her energy for her bebes.
When Sarah comes back out of the room to continue on her journey, she finds Mrs. S dressed as a sexy librarian, doing the full Perkins.
They drive to the asylum where Perkins was supposed to have a meeting, and after some adorable accent testing, they head inside and play it like Sarah is Perkins’ assistant and messed up the timing of the meeting. They’re met with skepticism at first, but Jeremy from Black Badge is impressionable and eventually gives them visitor passes to help a fellow assistant out.
They’re told they can’t see patients until tomorrow, but no one has ever succeeded in telling these two “no” so they march right into a secure ward first thing. As they approach, Mrs. S drops something she was saving for the last minute: this isn’t a mystery patient, but someone they know, so maybe don’t flip out when you see her.
But guess what. Sarah flipped out. And I did, too, because the patient? Is Virginia Coady.
Sarah calls her genocidal and is full on flipping out while Mrs. S pulls her sleepytime drug IV and shoots her up with adrenaline to try to get her unslumped.
On Revival, Cosima is cartoon tiptoeing, following Mud to see what she’s hiding. Mud first goes to PT’s house to timidly give him his treatment, then back outside again.
When Coady finally comes to, Sarah loses it on her, still pissed about a lot of shit she did, shit that violated and killed innocent girls, shit that cost Paul his life. They have questions, and if she wants to get out of this place, she’s gotta start answering them.
So Coady tells a tale of controlling human genetics, and what happens when the science isn’t quite right. Her voice follows Cosima down to a basement, where there is discarded and broken science equipment.
Sarah wants to know who put Coady in the asylum, but it doesn’t take her long to put it together: Susan Duncan. When Castor “fell” (read: got blowed up) Leda took over. Coady and Duncan worked together, long before the cloning experiment, and they had another subject, a different obsession. An obsession that lead to mistakes.
Under the voiceover, Cosima is still in my least favorite part of every video game, lurking around in the dark, finding old blood stains, getting the crap scared out of her by Mud.
Cosima, to her credit, doesn’t scream like a banshee like I do when playing aforementioned video games, but instead demands answers. In a panic, Mud shoves Cosima outside before PT finds her lurking.
Coady is still waxing poetic about the beautiful child with the rare genome they scienced half to death and basically made into Frankenstein’s monster.
Cosima follows Mud to that monster. She’s calling out to him, telling him she has blankets for him. She cares about him.
Cosima watches as he creeps out of the woods, heavy breathing and hunched shoulders and scars and pointed teeth. He barks at Mud, grabs the blankets and runs off with them. Cosima is scared.
That’s all Coady is willing to tell them until they get her out, but they’re interrupted by a doctor who can tell something is afoot. So instead Coady swipes Sarah’s visitor pass as they get escorted away.
Back on Revival again, we learn that PT thinks Coady is dead, and that he and Susan have made a breakthrough on the science that created the monster in the woods, and that the breakthrough has to involve Kira somehow. So despite their past differences, they’re going to work together again, which can’t be good for anyone involved.
The fam still in town all gathers at Mrs. S’s, including Adele. Felix is still salty she got roped into all this, but Sarah surprises all of us by saying it’s time they start trusting Mrs. S.
Felix doesn’t want to go to Switzerland, but there are hella Neolutionists there, and if they’re going to solve all this, they need the whole family. (Mrs. S is looking at Adele specifically when she says this, which I love so much.)
PT and Susan share a drink to celebrate their renewed partnership, Susan so lovingly calling Rachel PT’s “corporate raised psychopath” but PT doesn’t care, he wants her to stay at the head of all this. They toast to the future but I don’t think it’s a future any of us with a good head on our shoulders would want.
But Ira was eavesdropping so maybe he has some emotional attachment to his sestras and Kira now so he’ll warn them? Only time will tell.
More importantly though, time (less than a week of it) will bring us this:
Yeah, I squealed when I saw Coady. I’ll bet you an arm and a leg that she’ll go running right back to PT as soon as she gets out. Maybe for a little Susan-bashing, Neolution’s favorite pastime lately.
I also saw rumors (true-mors?) on Twitter that next week will be the Cophine, I mean, Cosima-week. We can hope, eh.
(again with the captions!)
Fellow Lost Girl fans: Did anyone recognise the entrance hall of the fancy bar…? It was the same as the Hotel California-sque hall in their season 5 opener, where Bo met with Freyja, the Valkyrie’s leader— Anyhow, just got a little bit nostalgic when I saw that. :D
Simpler times!
It’s the Royal York Hotel in Toronto. It’s kinda famous :P
It was also recently featured on The Handmaid’s Tale, the big ballroom in Episode 6 “A Woman’s Place”.
Cheers for properly identifying the place! :D
Cosima was acting very Emily Fields-ish this week! At the very least go borrow a bullet proof vest from Nicole Haught before poking around in the creepy mansion Cos!
1. Valerie – thank you thank you for this awesome recap!
2. Pretty sure Mrs S/Dr Perkins’s assistant is named Gabrielle from what Mrs S said and that’s Tatiana’s middle name!
3. “Jeremy from Black Badge” HAHAHA I had to read that 3x to make sure I was still on the OB recap and not Wynnona Earp
Did anyone else’s ears perk up when Mrs. S told Scott she wanted to see a timeline of Neolution?! I too would like to see that timeline! I really hope the exposition the shit out of that reveal, because I’m seriously getting confused. I’m assuming Susan worked with PT before she met/married Ethan? How did Ethan get involved in Leda? Did Ethan know about PT? or Coady? or Monster Boy? Or Castor? How old is Susan? Has he had any of PT’s anti-aging juice?
GAHHHHH!! Only 6 episodes left and still SO MANY QUESTIONS TO ANSWER!
I love your recaps!
Also did you notice one of the patients in the asylum who was paying very close attention to Sarah, Mrs. S, and Coady? It probably doesn’t mean anything but I always scream WHO ARE YOU whenever someone looks at the main characters too long/theyre known for being relatively okay for two seconds max.
AHHH YOUR CAPTIONS ARE AMAZING RIGHT WHY COULDN’T MAYA COME BACK
I l-o-l-ed at “I bet the babies are also played by Tatiana Maslany.”
And yay for some hot librarian/S Sadler action I mean dress-ups.
(Although I would expect an academic to have a *slightly* better-fitting jacket – Mrs S looked more like the receptionist in a dodgy accounting firm.)